


Blood and Bone

by quid_est



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: 221B Ficlet, Fawnlock, M/M, Post-Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-18
Updated: 2014-05-26
Packaged: 2017-12-20 14:42:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 1,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/888473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quid_est/pseuds/quid_est
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Watson carves a coronet of bone as he waits for Fawnlock's return.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Bone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Brittle Blossoms](https://archiveofourown.org/works/845794) by [orphan_account](https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account). 



> Post-Reichenbach-ish? (I play fast and loose with chronology, some.)
> 
> Pardon my dust, I'm new to Fawnlock and 221bs, and still cutting my teeth.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In his now-empty days, John Watson carves antler.

In his now-empty days, John carves antler. He will never lack material—years of shedding and new growth has left him a closetful, each one calling up a spring when all Sherlock’s sharp edges were, for a time, velvet-padded.

Carving’s hard work. Days of bleach, more days of drying. The tools of John’s old trade see use again—the bone-knife, the hacksaw, the respirator. This he wears to keep bone dust from coating his lungs the way it coats his workroom—Sherlock fogging the windows, seeping into cracks in the floor, dusting John’s hair, grey to cover the grey that has already taken root there.

Each winter, Sherlock would snort as John set off into the darkening afternoon to search out what he had left. Later, John would warm his windburned face against a wooly flank, endure condescension (“Honestly, I don’t save your hair-ends.”) Sherlock may lightly discard his own bones at need; John was not used to such things. 

His eyes are no longer bright, but John's hands haven’t lost their skill; he knows when to gouge and how to smooth. Sherlock, when he returns, will find a coronet seven seasons in the carving, fit to grace a proud brow while the new antlers replace the old. And return he will. John Watson understands the calling of bone to bone.


	2. Blood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Like everything about Sherlock, the antlers took some getting used to.

John used to be frightened of them. Not frightened. Wary. 

They grew just above the temple, above the long velvet ears, their pedicels covered by tufts of dark curls. Finely balanced, curving to seven wicked points. Like everything about Sherlock, they had taken getting used to. They were sharp as Sherlock’s tongue, and both could cut. 

The wariness hadn’t lasted long. John appreciated weapons you could see.

 

“Don’t they get in the way sometimes?” This was early; after John felt entitled to ask, before he knew when asking would be answered. 

Sherlock had rolled his limpid eyes. “Do your hands?” 

 

“How will we—” This was later, but not by much. They were overflowing John’s narrow cot, breeches in untidy heaps beside it, eyes and hands ravenous. John had never considered this logistical problem. Hadn’t allowed himself to think it relevant, until he stepped out into the chill air to see Sherlock cresting the hill with the flame of autumn behind him and oh. Oh. 

Sherlock’s tongue laved the crease of John’s knee, the line of his thigh. He fixed John with a brief, brilliant, exasperated glare. “Carefully.”

Even in roughness, in wildness, Sherlock had been exquisitely careful; any nicks John sustained were there by his own will. 

 

Carving, John caresses a point, remembers it tipped in velvet, tipped in blood.


	3. Breath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Antlers on John's stoop, the left one withered. _Something's close. Wait._

John stumbles over them before he sees them. He’s woken to watered sunlight over the windowshade, perhaps the last fine day before chill and frost take hold. A day to gather the late apples, to hang heavy shutters, to prepare for the long wait under snow. Longer, now, with no company. 

Quick reflexes pull his chin to his chest before he can crack it on the stoop; he comes down on his forearms. He turns to see what’s tossed him and feels his heart stutter. Antlers, a pair. The one his boot met’s landed prongs-up. Not seven points, but four, and one twisted.

John carries them inside. The late apples will freeze this year. 

 

All night there’s nothing. The next day, another pair. Again, the left is withered—nubbed where it should fork, one prong turned inward. John’s never doctored such as Sherlock, doesn’t know what blight might prune him so. The day passes, short and cold. Today, John doesn’t touch his tools; over the whine of the saw he may miss a wary footstep. 

In John’s dreams, he limps, and his gun arm’s gone boneless. He wakes with his heart in his throat, but this morning, the stoop’s empty. The breeze is musk and woodsmoke. _Something’s close. Wait._

John sits, watches the air fog with the hang of his breath.


	4. Bide

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock brings the latest fall of antler, and his own pride and misery, to John's doorstep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A thousand thanks to Jude, beta and Magic Writing Fairy extraordinaire. I swear, they glanced at this thing and the words just fell into the right order. 
> 
> Information on antler malformation sourced [here](http://www.jwildlifedis.org/content/8/4/311.full.pdf).

Bundled in blankets, John waits. Leans against the doorjamb. Sleeps, uneasy, 'til the dawn.

The birds' warning cry is the first sign of trouble: Sherlock once moved silent, surprised the crows. Behind the gallberry hedge, John sees russet haunches; above them, a curl-crowned head.

The blankets fall as John stands.

John’s “Hey!” grates against the birds’ shrieks as Sherlock rises and lifts his hands. _Crabbed, clawed,_ John thinks, but no: Sherlock’s holding out this year’s antlers.

“Dropped them this morning. Thought you’d want them.”

“You left the others.” John takes a step, another, towards the gallberry, stops when Sherlock stiffens. “What is it?”

“Turn your back, John.”

“No.”

A long wait. A sigh, and Sherlock plunges, fetches up with a bob of the head and a glare. His back hoof’s turned sideways, the leg a full three inches shorter. Such a break must’ve festered, every step a knife.

“When a buck’s hind leg is injured, the opposite antler grows in... malformed. Lasts his whole life.”

John feels something pool around his heart.

“How?”

“I fell.”

“Far?”

Another rolling footfall. “Very.” 

“I wish I’d been there.”

“You couldn’t have helped.”

“Let me, now?”

Sherlock’s granite, ice; he takes no more steps. “Not yet.”

 _In pride or in misery, walking or crawling, come home._ John says, “When you can, then. I’ll bide.”


	5. Brow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Winter's interminable, and John passes it in work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really can't tell you how much I appreciate all of the feedback I've gotten; it's made a long writing drought easier to get over.
> 
> Also, eternal thanks to Jude, bestest of betas.

Winter’s interminable.

Swallow and martin give way to redwing and vireo. John watches them diminish in the sweep of the sky, thinks: _None left for him to startle, now._ Blesses the snow, when it comes, as a cushion to soften uneven steps.

John sees daylight only through the dust-fogged workshop windows. After dark he carves by candlelight—the etching, now, exacting and fine. In the house, the shutters stay closed, and when he’s there (seldom, save to cook and sleep) he keeps his back to the door. If no one is watching behind the gallberry, John would rather not know.

The turn of the year brings weeks of cracking cold, slicks the snow with a cutting crust of ice. The ache that sinks into John’s shoulder is kinder than the gnaw at his heart each time he finds a frozen field mouse. He drags a pallet into the workshop; restless nights pass more easily if he can wake to work. Mornings, stiff-backed, he consoles himself with the hope that, should shivering weaken his pride, Sherlock might feel comfortable taking shelter in an empty house.

Finally, piecework: John interleaves curves of bone, one year’s growth flowing into the next. Last, he sets the twisted piece, its knotted grain a graven brier. _A far gentler thorn,_ he thinks, _to set across that brow._


	6. Bulbs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John thought he'd know, when the time came, how to give such a gift, but the time is here, and he doesn't.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You wouldn't figure that 221 words would take so long to write, but like its ornery protagonist, it shows up when it's ready and not a moment sooner.
> 
> My gratitude to Jude is bountiful and undying. Thank you.

Winter’s clenched fist relaxes at last, lets in a swirl of fog from which trees rise like the spars of foundered ships. No watchful eyes to wonder about now—John can barely see a foot in front of his face, must reclaim the cane for the short walk to the workshop. 

For three days John adds coats of oil, not wanting to admit the work is finished. Spends a fourth staring at the burnished bone, luminescent in the fog’s soft-focus. 

He’d thought he’d know, when the time came, how to give such a gift, but the time is here, and he doesn't. He aches to track lopsided hoofprints across the melting snow, to chase, capture, carry home victorious. 

_And face a glacial glare across the breakfast table, or worse, an open window and an empty bed. After the hunters he’s had to harry him, he won’t be caught unless he wills it so. Besides_ —a wry grimace— _neither of us are much for running, anymore._

In the end he leaves it on the doorstep, surrounded by snowdrops, a white narcissus in its center. _At the amygdala,_ he whispers; he needs no memory palace to keep this knowledge beneath his fingertips. How to take apart, how to put back together. How to heal.

As flowers wither, he replaces them. Waits. Plants more bulbs.


End file.
